I'm a racist!

Yup, it's official. Someone of an ethnicity whose roots stem back to the shores of Africa hundreds of years ago finally came out and said it. So I guess that means that I'm nothing more than another white trash bigot.

Here's the low down- I was on watch performing generator operations, as a result I was walking all over the plant. Well a group of shipyard workers (called "trades") had been standing in a pinchpoint along one of the hallways for a little while... And by a little while I mean closer to three hours (It was 10 AM and I took the watch at 7). My watch supervisor was running around with me as I performed the necessary valve manipulations to align our steam generators up for a chemistry sample. I guess he'd had a shorter fuse than I that day, because after about the twenty or thirtieth time we had to ask them to get out of the way he'd decided he'd had enough. Apparently they decided to move a garbage can into the middle of the hall, solidly blocking our way, and he was getting tired of asking them to move. Turing to the head guy he asks them if they could move the garbage can, to which they replied "Why?". My watch sup almost did a double take and proceeded to tell them, in a rather terse and annoyed tone, that they needed to get too and from the hallway to run generator operations. Did that trashcan really NEED to sit there in the middle of the hallway? The Trade shrugged and didn't reply. His buddy next to him did. Furrowing his eyebrows he turns to us and simply says "Just go around it."

First things first- We're ship's force, which means that we own the reactor plant. It's our spaces, we're the ones in charge. No one comes down to our home and tells us how to run our business.

Secondly- We were on watch, moving under the orders of the Watch Officer and the designated Shipyard Rep (called an STE- kinda like the boss of the entire plant for all the Ship yard workers down there). If these guys are getting in the way then we have everyright to tell them to move. I guess they didn't feel that way.

At this point the Watch Sup became fed up with them, stormed around the can and went up to EOS (the control station where the Watch Officer and the STE sit), and proceeds to lay out what happened to the STE. The STE gets upset and walks down there with us and proceeds to yell at the trades for still working on the same job for three hours and not making any progress, and then for giving ships force watchstanders lip. After about ten minutes he goes away back up to EOS and we continue our job of cycling the generators. Well as we walk past them, not even a minute later I over hear one woman raise her voice and actually say:

"You wanna know why they did that? It's cause we African American, straight! Straight!"

She was calling us racist. I was so surprised that I wasn't even upset with her. I took one look at her and started to cackle. That was probably one of the funniest things I'd heard all day. I suppose forcing someone of thier ethnic background to do the job they're paid for constitutes us as racists. It wasn't until later, after my mood had fouled, that I really got upset with that idiot.

I have a cousin who works with the local police department and he has to put up with that kind of flack everyday. Almost half of the people he pulls over claim racism on him, even though he catches them speeding at several hundred feet away with his radar- too far for him to see into the window. I told him about this and mentioned that living in the deep South of the US really was starting to turn me into a racist. He shook his head and said something surprising.

He pointed to the guy working behind the counter at the resturant we were at and asked me if I hated him. I gave him an odd look and told him no. That fellow happened to be black. He pointed to the table down the way at another nicely dressed couple of African descent and asked the same thing, and I gave him the same reply. He shrugged and said "But you hate the people at work." My reply was "Yup." "Well what if you see a white guy trying to act like a thug, gangsta?" I laughed and replied "Then he's an idiot and I hate him too."

He tells me "So it's not the skin color that bothers you then, it's the person behind it." Rolling my eyes upward for a minute I nodded. "Yeah, I guess you can say that, but all the people I hate all seem to have the same color."

He shakes his head. "It's the behavior that bothers you, and it's a behaviour that is characteristic of a large number of the African American population."

Turns out most people, of any ethnicity, can be broken down into two categories- Those who perpetuate and live within the confines of racial steriotypes, and those who seek to break free, and try ro rise above those generalizations. What was pissing me off was the behavior of the people I worked with; people who seemed to live and act rigidly within the confines of an accepted, steriotypical generalization based upon thier skin color. It's not just Black people. White, podunk, rednecks are the same way. They live within the steriotype, perpetuating it, spreading the negative image by living it out through thier actions. I didn't hate our waiter at the resturant or the family sitting beside us because, as far as I could tell, they had chosen to step up and away from those crude, steriotypical generalizations. They weren't out with a vendetta against "the man". They weren't whining about reparations (I'm serious folks, I've heard enough about reparations to write a book about...). They weren't trying to be a leech upon society, living solely off welfare, furthering the negative image society held for them that they alone were fostering. They seemed like relatively normal people, living normal lives, trying to distance themselves from the bad image that many, many others seemed to embrace.

In a sense I am racist. Not against skin color or ethnicity, but more toward lifestyles that people chose to accept. I hate people who have twenty thousand dollar rims on a two thousand dollar car, parked infront of thier $25,000 home. I hate people who have money to burn on needful things they cannot afford, while they keep thier kids locked onto a diet cheap, poorly made foods. I hate people who want to demand something for nothing from the government simply because they chose not to better themselves as an individual. I have personal issues with people who use thier great, great grandparents as an excuse to get free money, and then get upset when they get turned down.

Like wise I have respect for those who put the time in at school to boost thier grades and make something of themselves. I have respect for those who rose up from poverty relying upon themselves to make a better future. I have respect for people who chose to push a lifestyle of steriotypical ignorance aside for the sake of thier children. Skin color has nothing to do with it.

I guess I'm still kinda confused about it all though. I know that the average joe walking down the street I really dont feel one emotion over another about him, but the one who has his Escalade parked in the middle of the road to holler at a random woman walking down the sidewalk really tweaks my sh*t. Generally this type of attitude and behavior are found within the subclass of lower income urban and suburban people. It's not just there either though, I see sh*t I hate everywhere- People who can't drive and don't know what a turn signal is, people who shave or put on makeup while driving, people who have cell phones on in resturaunts, people who "bling" their teeth and live in a ramshackle home, people who are missing teeth and haven't washed since the christmas before last, people who demand reparations for thier great, great grandfather's hard work, people who demand sympathy simply because of what their -grandparents- went through over Sixty years ago in Europe, people who self righteously press thier own religion upon you- damming and condemning you to hell in the same breath, people who use that little two way walkie talkie feature on thier cell phones so that now I have listen to thier jabbering AND the distorted noise of the person on the other end, people who listen to music on thier cell phone- using the speaker on the back, people who hit you from behind and then have the nerve to yell and scream and blame the accident on you, people who spit on homeless folk, people who protest about eating meat and genetically altered food while billions around the world starve every day, college students who burn american flags simply because they want to be on T.V.- to be a rebel, the mother f*ckers who are feeding those same college kids the B.S. to drive them to do such an act, there's no skin color involved, I hate them for the ignorance they spread and thier tenuous and selfrighteously destructive grasp on reality. I hate them all.

Then again, what am I doing to help resolve any of these issues? ...Well, any of the major ones. It's easy to turn your phone off when you're eating out, or to simply admit when you've made a mistake rather than to try and pass the blame. But apart from what what am I really doing, other than spreading my own ill feelings around to others.

In that sense, I'm just as bad as the rest of them. Where do I go from here? Am I really, truly a racist, and if so what sense, or category do I fall under. Work is driving me nuts, and there's enough things to worry about without someone pulling the cheapest card in the book on you because you're upset that they're just standing in the way, running thier mouths. So, where do I really stand? I sure as hell don't know myself, at least not anymore. I think this is a sign that I need to get out of the military, and the deep south, before I fall into one of those categories myself...

...Or am I already too late?

Meh, A question for another day I guess. I've been up for almost twenty four hours and I need to lay down. I'm runnin' ragged. Just thought I'd rant about... hell I'm not even sure what I'm complaining about this time. Sorry if anyone took offense, but you'll just have to deal with it- Those stupid motorola, two way walkie talkie phones are the worst invention ever, hands down. Really, I think it's time to get a new phone.

~W

 

Only ignorant people make

Only ignorant people make comment like "It's because I'm black," and actually mean it.

..You remind me of Foamy just more educated. ^_^

 

WOOTS

WOOTS

I agree with your hundred percent about how you said it. EVERYTHING WOOTS!!!! Dude you are my hero when it concerns rants . Also I believe this deserves it's own thread just because of how direct it is and how everyone can agree to it

 

I hate That crap too

I hate That crap too But
Welcome too the real world
I How Some People are I dont understand how some people can act they way act. I think to my self how they do it but i can never get it so. i make assumptions and think its temptation It may be to fit in but some times its not even about fitting in thats what gets me and makes me wonder why they do this sh*t